


who puts the glad in gladiator?

by prioi



Series: hercules au [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, hercules au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 07:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prioi/pseuds/prioi
Summary: happy birthday bree!!! sorry this is so late but man. it got away from me this was meant to be a cute lil one off thing and it's mostly just goofy and fun but anyways!!! i love u ur a constant light in my life and tbh i am blessed to know u





	who puts the glad in gladiator?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [derheck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/derheck/gifts).



> happy birthday bree!!! sorry this is so late but man. it got away from me this was meant to be a cute lil one off thing and it's mostly just goofy and fun but anyways!!! i love u ur a constant light in my life and tbh i am blessed to know u

“Okay, yeah, that guy right there.” Merle nudges Lup and points through the bushes. Between the branches stands a bugbear wielding a trident, brandishing it at some person pressed against the trunk of a tree.

“What? Where? I don’t see anything,” Lup whispers back. She shifts where she’s crouched, red boots sinking into the mud of the marsh. “Not like there’s, uh, literally a giant creature shouting ten feet away from us. I’d see that, maybe, if I was really focusing --”

Merle wacks her arm with his tree-hand. “Yeah, alright, smartass. Go save the civilian, show me how big and strong you are. And for the love of Pan, use your damn spear.”

Lup scrunches up her nose. “Fine, sure. Catch ya later, old man.”

She darts between the ivy covered trees and thistle bushes, stepping as lightly as she can. She hates this, the mud and the humidity and how quickly she has to move her feet to stay quiet. Her shoes make an awful squelching sound if she lets them sink too deep into the marsh.

As silently as she can, Lup creeps up behind the bugbear. Absently, she notes the pond on his left, what looks like a wand in the grass at his feet, the armor he’s wearing, with a symbol etched deep in the iron -- a bird maybe? 

Lup hangs back, just for a little longer. Maybe other heroes would rush in and attack without analyzing the situation at hand -- Magnus, one of Merle’s other students, certainly would -- but Lup is not other heroes. She can practically hear Takko’s voice in her head, incessant: _You’re gonna get your dumb ass killed, sis, and, tragically, I’m not exactly around to save the day._

“-- I’m looking for. I was told I would find it here, but I’m not sure if she got it right, this time,” the bugbear is saying as Lup finally slides up behind him, spear held loosely in one hand.

The civilian shakes his head, leaning further back from the bugbear’s trident. His spectacles are cracked on one side, all the way across the lense, and he’s wearing study denim, like he planned on doing some kind of hard labor today. He opens his mouth to reply to the bugbear, but his gaze shifts away, over to Lup, at the ready with her spear.

His mouth opens a bit wider.

Lup frantically shakes her head, makes a cutting motion across her throat, and luckily, the civilian seems to understand.

“Uhhh, um, I, uh, I told you, pal, I’m not really sure what you want from me,” he says, tearing his eyes from Lup, focusing very intently on the bugbear’s face.

“I’m sure you do know,” the bugbear continues, almost pleasant, as he presses the points of the trident into the civilians sternum.

“Please, I’d really rather not --”

“Excuuuse me,” Lup says, fingers tightening around her spear.

The bugbear doesn’t even start. He just turns around to look at her patiently.

“I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of something,” he says.

Lup rolls her eyes. “Let him go.”

“I really can’t do that, I have to --”

“Let him go, or I fight you, my dude, that’s how these things --” Lup gestures between them -- “go. I’m supposed to, like, be a hero or whatever. You’re supposed to attack me?”

“Hm. I really think I’ll just kill this oddly dressed man --”

“Hey -- !”

“-- and then leave.”

“I’m not gonna let you do that,” Lup says. She shifts her feet in the dirt, finding her center, or whatever the fuck Merle calls it.

“Well, alright, then,” the bugbear says, and he stabs his trident into the civilian.

Lup doesn’t even have time to yell before the bugbear is on her, swatting claws at her face. She dodges back, weaves, and jabs the spear at the bugbear’s belly. He swats it away, claws leaving gouges in the wood.

Lup jabs again, and knows even as she’s doing it that it’s the wrong move, but it’s too late. The bugbear grabs the spear, rips it from her grasp, and snaps it in half over his knee. He tosses the pieces to the side carelessly.

“Now, I leave.” The bugbear makes to walk past her, but Lup stands in his way.

“No, you don’t,” Lup says, and she grins, slow and wide, as her hands catch fire.

When she was young, Lup fell in love with the flickering of the campfire -- the smoke that set in her lungs, the ash of burning logs thick in the air, the way the flames curled and swayed. Meanwhile, Taako fell in love with cooking. It’s not that she didn’t love that too, don’t get her wrong. She just loved the fire beneath the skillet more than the food inside it.

She may have loved fire, loved the fight, but she never wanted to be a hero. That was not her destiny, and she didn’t want it. She didn’t want it when she and Taako were on the road; she didn’t want it when they scraped for anything to get by; she didn’t even want it in Athens, when the hydra attacked and destroyed every building in sight, and a flood of rubble shoved Taako out of her grasp, and Lup right down a cliff.

But Merle says her destiny is to be a hero, that the fire under her hands, beneath her skin, is there to help people. Maybe she couldn’t save her brother, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t at least try to save others.

She doesn’t kill the bugbear, but she knocks him out him painfully quickly. Merle tells her constantly that she shouldn’t only rely on her fire, because one day it may not be there, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Lup nudges the bugbear with her foot to make sure he’s out before stumbling over to the civilian, still pinned to the tree with the trident, his head limp.

“Gods,” Lup groans, “gods, please don’t be dead.”

The civilian raises his head. “What?”

Lup squacks and automatically raises a flaming hand. The civilian squacks in return, flinching back from her fire.

“Holy fuck, I totally thought the bugbear killed your ass,” Lup says, lowering her hand.

The civilian laughs weakly and gestures at his front, where the trident pinned him to the tree by his shirt, but not do more than slice open his arm.

“Well shit. Guess it’s your lucky day,” Lup says, and she begins yanking the trident out of the tree trunk.

“I don’t know about that,” the civilian says. He pushes at the trident while Lup pulls.

“I mean, got to meet me, didn’t you? That’s the most lucky you’re ever gonna get, babe,” Lup says, and she grins when the civilian falters, blushing a little. He stammers until she finally manages to rip the trident out of the tree. While the civilian steadies himself, she tosses it off into the bushes, and holds out a hand.

“I’m Lup.”

The civilian glances at her hand, and then her face, and blushes some more.

“I’m Barry,” he says, taking her hand. His palm is damp with sweat. “Barry Bluejeans.”

“What the fuck kind of name is that,” Merle’s voice demands from the bushes. Barry jumps, but Lup just sighs, dropping his hand.

“Why’re you always cramping my style?” she says.

“Bring Jean Boy back to base, we can’t just leave him. I guess,” Merle continues as if she hadn’t spoken, the bushes rustling and his voice fading as he walks away.

“Well.” Lup looks Barry up and down. “What did that bugbear want from you anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Barry says, eyes shifting away.

Hm. Right.

“Why don’t we get you patched up, hm?”

“Uh, yeah, that -- that would be great, thanks.” Barry stoops to grab the wand from the foot of the tree.

“Child of Circe, huh?” Lup says as they walk back towards the bushes, away from the still-unconscious bugbear.

“Yeah. Child of -- what, Apollo?”

“Helios.” Lup grins. “Straight from the source.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Mm.”

“I didn’t say -- I mean, I just -- um, thanks. For saving me. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem, my man,” Lup says, waving a hand. “All in a day’s work.”

She glances at him again, his cracked lenses, his disheveled hair, the blood on his shoulder and the blush still present on his cheeks. Cute.


End file.
